As 1,549 Mountain bikers lined up in the pre-dawn cold of the Colorado Rockies to race the Leadville Trail 100, one of them was different. Matt Dewitt doesn’t have any hands.

He lost them in Iraq, July 2003 when a rocket propelled grenade struck the weapon he was operating on top of a gun truck. Matt fell back into the hum vee and his forearms fell in on top of him. Shrapnel knocked out his teeth and something from the blast tore the skin off large sections of his legs. Long hospitalization and rehab followed. Withdrawing and turning away from life’s challenges were an options for Dewitt. “I’ve been down that road. It’s boring. It’s not good, you know it’s not good,” he says.